Thimphu and Punakha

Getting to Know Daphne at the Paper Factory

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"Would you like to see the paper factory?" our guide asked us as we wandered around the tourist attractions of Thimphu, Bhutan's capital city. He'd clearly realised that all his attempts at the National Library to explain to us what sort of plants were used to make the paper used in the historic volumes had failed completely. "It's made from Daphne" he said and we looked at him vaguely, with absolutely no idea what or who Daphne was. He tried and failed to explain and eventually realised that, unlike more horticulturally savvy guests, he'd landed himself a pair of ignorant dodos. We were clueless.And so, heading back to our hotel, the River View, we pulled off the main road and...Read More

"Would you like to see the paper factory?" our guide asked us as we wandered around the tourist attractions of Thimphu, Bhutan's capital city. He'd clearly realised that all his attempts at the National Library to explain to us what sort of plants were used to make the paper used in the historic volumes had failed completely.

"It's made from Daphne" he said and we looked at him vaguely, with absolutely no idea what or who Daphne was. He tried and failed to explain and eventually realised that, unlike more horticulturally savvy guests, he'd landed himself a pair of ignorant dodos. We were clueless.

And so, heading back to our hotel, the River View, we pulled off the main road and scuttled up a rather rough looking side road and parked up outside a small building with a hand painted sign proclaiming it as the Jungshi Handmade Paper Factory. This was no touristic organised tour with guides in uniforms showing you the wonders of industry - instead the two of us and Rinzin, our guide, just wandered in and mooched about the building being pretty much ignored by the staff which was just fine by us.

A group of ladies sat pulling bits of woody fibrous 'stuff' apart whilst chatting and gossiping. Looking at this material we still had no idea what the paper was made from, so Rinzin took us outside to see a large metal pot built into a sort of boiler where the woody stuff was cooked to soften the fibres. We saw a large vat of the material both before and after cooking and still had no idea what it was. Back inside the factory, we watched the paper makers dipping metal mesh frames into large sinks of sludgy water. They scooped water onto the frames, swooshed it back and forth until the bulk of the water drained and then turned the sediment out onto a large block of wet paper sheets. From the block, the sheets were transferred onto hot near-vertical plates for drying. The ladies were sitting close to these plates - clearly they not only dried the paper but kept the ladies warm too. We saw bowls of nasturtium petals which were added to some of the paper for decoration and then moved into the small factory shop where we could see the fuller range of products available.

The shop was selling sheets of paper - of the size of a sheet of wrapping paper - for about £4 a go. They had notebooks in various sizes, writing paper and envelopes, even lampshades. Some paper contained flower petals, others leaves and pieces of fern. Nothing was cheap but all was very charming and authentic but ultimately not very useful. If you've ever tried to write on handmade papers, then you'll know what I mean.

We emerged without spending anything but we were somewhat wiser. The man in the shop knew the translation of daphne and showed us photos of the tree from which the paper is made. Daphne, it turned out, it the botanical name for Mulberry, something that we don't have in England so we felt less guilty for not knowing about it. Clearly it's got more uses than just feeding silk-worms.

As a totally irrelevant aside, I learned when trying to sell raspberry flavours to a major Chinese confectionery firm, that China doesn't have raspberries and mulberries are as close as they get - there you go, my reviews are nothing if not educational!

There was no charge to see the factory, no hard-sell to buy anything, just a nice little visit to see how paper was made everywhere in olden times. I can't help thinking though that I'm glad I can just call the stationery suppliers and get a massive box of photocopy paper any time I need it.

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Thimphu Weekend Market

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Attraction | "Anyone for Yak Meat and Chillies?"

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The Weekend Market in Bhutan's capital city, Thimphu, takes place every weekend, starting on Friday evening and running through to late afternoon on the Sunday. It draws traders from all across this Himalayan kingdom, many of whom will travel several days by public bus on poor roads, up and down mountain passes just to get there and then several days to get home again.The market is located close to the city's river in an area bordered by Chogyal Lam and Kuendey Lam and is well known locally for providing the best and freshest goods in the city. However, it must be stressed that this is most definitely not a market staged for tourists. We were taken to see the market on our last day in Thim...Read More

The Weekend Market in Bhutan's capital city, Thimphu, takes place every weekend, starting on Friday evening and running through to late afternoon on the Sunday. It draws traders from all across this Himalayan kingdom, many of whom will travel several days by public bus on poor roads, up and down mountain passes just to get there and then several days to get home again.

The market is located close to the city's river in an area bordered by Chogyal Lam and Kuendey Lam and is well known locally for providing the best and freshest goods in the city. However, it must be stressed that this is most definitely not a market staged for tourists. We were taken to see the market on our last day in Thimphu on our way back from visiting Cheri Gompa and were quite fired up to see what would be on offer.

The market sprawls across a large area with certain types of product being focused in particular areas. One such area was the yak-meat zone which turned my vegetarian stomach quite badly. There's no risk that you could be sold anything else pretending to be yak because 9 times out of 10 distinguishing features such as hooves are still attached to the yak leg that's in front of you. The meat is particularly dark in colour and left me feeling squeamish.

Many of the traders don't have stalls as such; instead their goods are laid out on cardboard or plastic sheeting. Vegetables of all shapes and sizes are scattered around the feet of elderly ladies, many of them with their traditional tribal jewellery with complex nose rings. Quite how they communicate was unclear as our guide told us that many of them only speak their local dialects and don't understand the national language.

Particularly of note are the massive baskets of fresh and dried red chillies which are used as a vegetable rather than a seasoning and eaten in great quantities especially for the national dish, ema datse, which means 'chillies and cheese'. Nearby you'll find traders offering leaf-wrapped parcels of datse, the soft cheese that accompanies the chillies.

In addition to fruit and vegetables, you can find incense and household goods, cheap poorly made western-style clothing, mountains of dried fish that would stink out your luggage if you felt the urge to take them home, and a few odds and ends that could at a pinch be considered worth taking home as souvenirs. However this is a market for the locals and its interest for tourists is much more for looking at than for shopping. If you smile nicely and ask the stall holders if they mind, most will be happy for you take their photos or let you snap away at their attractively arranged piles of chillies. Nobody is expecting you to buy anything and it's a refreshing change from the full-on aggression of bazaars and markets in much of the world. Here you'll be free to look but please be polite and keep in mind that whilst some of the sellers may seem to have nothing more than a pile of old junk, that really is all they have and they don't need you turning up your nose or laughing at their produce.

Play nice and you'll be welcomed but don't stay too long. Our guide advised us to get out after about 20 minutes because of the foul smelling dust that was blown up in some parts of the market which he said could carry germs for unwary foreigners. Or maybe he just wanted to get us back to the hotel for a beer.

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Member Rating 3 out of 5 on January 27, 2009

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Druk Wangyel (108) Chortens

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Attraction | "A Very Bizarre Memorial on the Road to Punakha"

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There is only one way to get to Punakha from Thimphu and that is over the Dorchu La (literally Dorch Pass) by road. The 108 chortens at Dorchu La are one of the strangest and most unusual monuments that I have ever seen.In 2003, the fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, led his troops into battle against Assamese separatists who were using land in southern Bhutan to launch raids against targets in India. It was the first time that his country had been involved in military conflict for more than a century and went very much against the country's peaceful Buddhist principles. One of the king's wives, Queen Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuk, picked Dochu La as the location for a set of memo...Read More

There is only one way to get to Punakha from Thimphu and that is over the Dorchu La (literally Dorch Pass) by road. The 108 chortens at Dorchu La are one of the strangest and most unusual monuments that I have ever seen.

In 2003, the fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, led his troops into battle against Assamese separatists who were using land in southern Bhutan to launch raids against targets in India. It was the first time that his country had been involved in military conflict for more than a century and went very much against the country's peaceful Buddhist principles. One of the king's wives, Queen Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuk, picked Dochu La as the location for a set of memorial chortens as a symbol of her prayers for the protection of her country and to give thanks for the safe return of her husband and his troops. Rather than build just one chorten, the queen ordered the building of 108 structures, a number which is particularly auspicious in the local religion. These chortens were built in 2004 and are known as the Druk Wangyel Chortens or the 'Chortens of the Victory of the Dragon King'.

Chortens are, as far as I can make out, a uniquely Bhutanese construction and are the local version of what's known in other Buddhist countries as a stupa. You find chortens all over the country, sometimes to mark special events that happened in a particular place and often to ward away evil at inauspicious places such as places where rivers meet or historical demons did evil deeds. At Dochu La there are one hundred and eight chortens, arranged in three concentric circles around an island-like mound that sits in the middle of the road. The symbolism of this is due to 108 being the number of beads on a Buddhist rosary.

After driving up the mountain roads, it's a relief to arrive at the pass and get out of your vehicle and get some fresh air. Looking towards the Himalaya range in front of you, there's a new temple on your left hand side, and the 108 Chortens form a mound to your right. Each of the chortens is a tiled roof structure with a painted white base, with a painted red band about three quarters of the way up and a small gilded peak on top of the roof. When the chortens are being built and reach a height of about 1 meter tall, they are anointed with grains of rice and butter. Then a 'sokshing' or 'life tree' is put inside the chorten. The sokshing is a pole of juniper wood, painted and decorated with golden writing and wrapped in silk.

Seeing the chortens, especially if you weren't expecting them, comes as a bit of a shock. We didn't know anything about them and suddenly, as you pull over to look at the mountains, you find your own little man-made mount covered in identikit little structures. The lower ring has 45 chortens, the middle one has 36 and the top ring has just 27. Each of these little structures is about four or five feet high and they are all decorated in identical style. It's hard not to be moved by such a strange memorial but also pretty difficult to really understand the point of it.

The island of chortens sits right in the middle of the main road so all drivers have to pass around them. Thankfully, since the Bhutanese, like their neighbours in India, drive on the left side of the road, it's possible to circumnavigate the chortens in the clockwise direction that's demanded by Buddhism, and still stick to the rules of the road. Our driver took several spins around the chorten mound to gain extra good luck before driving on to the next town.

As you might imagine at a height of over 3000 meters, it's pretty windy at the pass so don't forget to grab your coat before wandering among the chortens. And you'll definitely need your camera, not just to capture the absurdity of this mound of little buildings but also for the fabulous mountain views.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 26, 2009

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Dorchu La Temple

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Attraction | "The Temple on the Top the World"

Detail of the paintings in the temple porch Photo, Bhutan, Asia

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The temple the overlooks Dochu La pass on the road from Thimphu to Punakha was opened very recently and at the time we visited, still had no official name. Our guide suggested that it might be given one when the 5th king was crowned in November 2008 but I've not been able to confirm that. However, if you ask for it as the Dochu La temple, I think anyone in Bhutan will know which place you mean.We had left our hotel in Thimphu after a rather bland breakfast and had stupidly not thought about what lay ahead of us. Getting anywhere in Bhutan by road is an arduous business and within 30 minutes of leaving the city, I was starting to struggle to keep my breakfast down as we wound back and forth...Read More

The temple the overlooks Dochu La pass on the road from Thimphu to Punakha was opened very recently and at the time we visited, still had no official name. Our guide suggested that it might be given one when the 5th king was crowned in November 2008 but I've not been able to confirm that. However, if you ask for it as the Dochu La temple, I think anyone in Bhutan will know which place you mean.

We had left our hotel in Thimphu after a rather bland breakfast and had stupidly not thought about what lay ahead of us. Getting anywhere in Bhutan by road is an arduous business and within 30 minutes of leaving the city, I was starting to struggle to keep my breakfast down as we wound back and forth round rough bendy roads. By the time we reached the Dochula pass I was ready to curl up in a ball and die and I couldn't wait to leap out of the car and fill my lungs with mountain air. Once my legs stopped shaking and started to function more or less normally, I took in the amazing views or the Himalaya mountains in the distance before heading up a long flight of steps to the temple sitting on a mound overlooking the pass.

The steps up were long and my legs were still in a bit of a bad way from a big climb a couple of days before, but the sight of the pretty temple at the top kept me going. When we arrived we were really surprised at how different this temple was from all the others that we had seen on our trip up to that point. Firstly it was incredibly new and in immaculate condition. The gilded door shone in the morning sunshine but the most remarkable difference from the older temples was in the painted decoration on the outside walls. In a style that reminded me a bit of Japanese manga cartoons, the fresco artists had covered the walls of the porch of the temple with paintings of the Bhutanese royal children.

The Fourth King has four wives who are all sisters. So as you can imagine, he gets to have a massive number of children without having to get four mothers-in-law. What a bonus, said my husband, I guess that's what you call royal privilege. There were two paintings in which the royal children were playing musical instruments whilst flying about the temple. In another fresco, two of the sons in traditional dress were marching around a parade ground. Since the royals are considered to be something akin to living gods, I suppose we shouldn't have been so surprised by these pictures, but we were.

Entering the temple through the golden door, we found a light, bright temple with three large gilded Buddhist statues on one side. I can't recall precisely which statues these were but the standard combination in Bhutan is usually the Shakyamuni Buddha in the middle, Buddha Padmasambhavi (the man who brought Buddhism to Bhutan) on one side and Zhabdung Ngawang Namgyal on the other. Looking at the rest of the temple though, it was a real shock to find the paintings on the walls split between scenes from the life of the Buddha and highlights from the 100 years of the Bhutanese royal family. The lower half of the walls had the religious paintings and above the balcony were the royal pictures. These included scenes of the moon landings and the fourth king in a flak jacket leading his army into battle against the Indian settlers in the south of the country. This mixture of sacred and secular images in one building was really unusual, oddly juxtaposed (what is a king with a rifle doing in a Buddhist temple?) and strangely beautiful.

Leaving the temple, we walked around the outside in a clockwise direction. All Buddhist monuments have to be circumnavigated in a clockwise direction. We stood beside a small outbuilding with a telescope and drank in the scenery from the mountains before heading back down the steps and back to our car then off for a cup of tea, some biscuits and lots more mountain views.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 26, 2009

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Hotel Zangto Pelri

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Hotel | "Like Sleeping in a Vintage Train Carriage"

Hotel Zangto Pelri Photo, Punakha, Bhutan

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The Zangto Pelri was my favourite of the three hotels we stayed in during our tour of Bhutan and I really enjoyed the two days that we spent there. It's located a few miles outside Punakha, the city (though I use the term loosely as nothing is very big in Bhutan) that was the historic capital city before the fourth king moved the capital to Thimphu.We arrived by car from Thimphu after a nauseating drive up winding roads and over the Dochu La Pass - a place with fabulous views of the Himalaya and a good place to stop and re-dose your travel sickness tablets.With stops for photos and cups of tea, the journey was about three hours and as we pulled off the main road (again, I use t...Read More

The Zangto Pelri was my favourite of the three hotels we stayed in during our tour of Bhutan and I really enjoyed the two days that we spent there. It's located a few miles outside Punakha, the city (though I use the term loosely as nothing is very big in Bhutan) that was the historic capital city before the fourth king moved the capital to Thimphu.

We arrived by car from Thimphu after a nauseating drive up winding roads and over the Dochu La Pass - a place with fabulous views of the Himalaya and a good place to stop and re-dose your travel sickness tablets.

With stops for photos and cups of tea, the journey was about three hours and as we pulled off the main road (again, I use the term 'main' very lightly) we wound up another hill and suddenly there was the hotel. The location is very rural with nothing and nobody around to disturb the peace and quiet.

I think we were the first arrivals of the day and so our guide was able to get us a really good room in one of the bungalows in the hotel grounds. Room 309 was half of a little cottage and the lowest of the cottages on the mountainside with uninterrupted views down into the Punakha valley. In the distances the turquoise waters of the river meandered through the countryside and I just wanted to sit and stare at it for hours.

The room itself was astonishingly cute and reminded me of an up-market railway carriage similar to royal carriages that I've seen in railway museums. It was a long narrow room with wooden panelled walls, wooden floors and a white-painted wooden ceiling with a fan in the middle. There were twin beds with a small side table between and there were large windows behind the bed heads and all along the wall that faced the valley. The beds had fluffy duvets and crisp linens. Other furniture included a large built-in wardrobe a small desk and chair with a mirror over and lamps either side, and a TV table with (predictably enough) a TV on top. There was an oil filled radiator for heating. On the side of the room was a small en suite bathroom with shower over the bath, a loo and a sink unit and next to the entrance to the bathroom was the door to a lovely little wooden balcony with chairs and a table. Everything was really clean and well maintained.

After we dropped our bags in the room we headed back to the main hotel building to get some lunch. There was a large lobby with a big reception desk and a counter selling odds and ends. A large seating area served as a sort of bar although drinks had to be ordered from the restaurant next door. The restaurant was large, rather soul-less and served exactly the same food you find in every hotel and restaurant throughout the country. Our lunch included fish full of bones, tough stringy green beans and some of the nastiest coffee I've tasted in a long time. But this was our third hotel and we were getting used to the food.

Dinner on the first evening wasn't too bad - the usual bland buttery soup but a good buffet selection which included red and white rice, naans and parathas (breads), fish in garlic, mutter paneer (cheesy peas!), cheesy potatoes, crisply fried veg and a bowl of toxic ema datse (the local chillies and cheese that should come with a health warning). It shows how excited I was by the food that I actually went straight back to the room and wrote down all the dishes. I'm guessing in retrospect that there were some meat dishes as well but I would have ignored them. Puddings are not exciting in Bhutan and in this case it was sliced pineapple.

The hotel has one of the few outdoor swimming pools in the country but at the time of year when we visited it was far too cold to use it. There's also a very expensive gift shop and a bar in the gardens of the hotel.

Both nights we slept like dead people - it was so calm, quiet and peaceful that we woke feeling really refreshed in our little cabin. Admittedly I think we were lucky to get cabins and not one of the main hotel rooms but once in a while it's nice when the luck falls your way.

One other slightly strange thing about the hotel was that almost every member of staff was female - from the porters, through the waiting staff, receptionists and shop attendants, I don't recall seeing any men working there at all. When it was time to leave a tiny lady no taller than 5 feet and built like a reed came to collect our bags. Grabbing both our bags, we weren't at all surprised that she soon gave in and took just the one and came back for the other but absolutely refused to let us take them ourselves. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 26, 2009

Hotel Zangto Pelri
Walakha PO Box 15
Punakha, Bhutan
+975 (2) 584125

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